Thank you for you kind words!

I had an inkling that was the case. But I figured that, for my own benefit, I’d elucidate my position a bit more. If it falls on deaf bot ears, then that’s just how it is. There’s not much else I was going to say anyway.

I agree that requiring certain industries to be based domestically is the best route

This isn’t what I said at all. What I meant was, for service businesses (eg car dealerships, warehouses, restaurants) and heavy industry (eg oil refineries, plastics and chemicals, composites like wind turbine blades or aircraft fuselages) which practically must remain within the country, support those endeavors by making it easier or cheaper to operate, so that an internal economy for those products develops locally. Trying to force stronger internal ties would inevitably lead to resources and incentives spent where they’re not most needed.

If you don’t tariff everyone, how does that bring manufacturing back? They’ll just move to the next cheapest country, and then you’re playing whack-a-mole.

I’m not sure if you saw my Mexico example or not, or purposely chose to ignore it, but manufacturing that moves from China to Mexico would still further a USA policy of reduced economic dependency on China. It doesn’t matter so much that it’s not “Made in USA” so much that it’s not “Made in China”, if that’s the desired economic policy.

And that doesn’t even include the knock-on effects that anchoring the Mexican economy would create: economic migration – when people move from a place of poorer economic condition to a richer economic place – would naturally abate if the Mexican economy grew. Economic opportunity also displaces gang warfare and drug distribution, in part.

The alternative is to apply huge subsidies for manufactures to ignore Mexico and set up shop in the USA, but then the cost of land, labor, and capital is substantially higher, and the products less affordable because they must be higher priced to pay for those means of production. Why do all this when Mexico or Canada are right next door?

If you don’t support tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs domestically, how do you think we could make it through a war with our manufacturing partners?

I express no position here about China nor Taiwan, but the false dichotomy presented is between: 1) enforce trade barriers indiscriminately against every country, territory, and uninhabitable island in the world without regard for allies nor enemies, or 2) diversify economic dependency away from one particular country.

The former is rooted in lunacy and harkens back to the mercantilism era, where every country sought to bring more gold back home and export more stuff and reducing imports. The latter is pragmatic and diplomatic, creating new allies (economically and probably militarily) and is compatible with modern global economic notions like comparative advantage, where some countries are simply better at producing a given product (eg Swiss watches) so that other countries can focus on their own specialization (eg American-educated computer scientists).

As a specific example, see Mexico, which under NAFTA and USMCA stood to be America’s new and rising manufacturing comrade. Mexico has the necessary geographical connectivity and transportation links to the mainland USA, its own diverse economy, relatively cheap labor, timezones and culture that make for easier business dealings than cross-Pacific, and overall was very receptive to the idea of taking a share of the pie from China.

Long-term thinking would be to commit to this strategic position, this changing the domestic focus to: 1) replace China with North America suppliers for certain manufactured goods, 2) continue to foster industries which are “offshore-proof”, such as small businesses that simply have to exist locally or industries whose products remain super-expensive or hazrdous to ship (eg lithium ion batteries). Sadly, the USA has not done this.

It is sheer arrogance to believe that the economic tide for industries of yore (eg plastic goods, combustion motor vehicles, call centers) can be substantially turned around in even a decade, when that transition away from domestic manufacturing took decades to occur. Further egoism is expressed by unilateral tarrif decisions that don’t pass muster logically nor arithmetically.

Agreed. Email has its uses – ubiquity, mostly “Just Works” ™, most people know how to use it – and while I might send a symmetric encrypted PDF along with a plaintext email, I’m more inclined to suggest that my recipients adopt Signal and get all the benefits of e2ee. EFF even has a guide for it: https://ssd.eff.org/module/how-to-use-signal

This 100%. It is well-advised to consider what your security/privacy objectives are, since encryption-at-rest is different than guarding against eavesdropping when sending outbound mail. What threat model you use will define what is or isn’t acceptable.

I previously looked into doing exactly this, and recall this comment on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31245923

One could argue the price of smtp2go at $150/yr is a bit steep, but it would also neatly avoid issues with sending outbound mail, since you’re paying them to deal with those headaches. For inbound mail, I can’t see why any mail operator wouldn’t deliver to the server designated by your MX records, though you’ll also have to deal with spam and other concerns vis-a-vis self hosting.

On the same thread but different comment, VPS operators might already run an SMTP server that you can relay through.

I wish you good luck in this endeavor!

This is fair, but one would hope that manufacturers see the writing on the wall: if using USB C as the charging input, the products (ebikes, phones, laptops, etc) have to be resilient, because we already have a world where the USB C connector is the “lingua franca” but each charger’s capabilities are different.

Phones already have logic to detect “slow chargers” or poor cables, by way of sensing the voltage drop when ramping up the charging current. That’s the minimum level of sophistication I would expect in a production ebike, and it’ll certainly have to be more than that for 100+ Watts.

Fortunately, charge controller chip manufacturers are mostly on top of this, marketing their wares for very advanced charging profiles and feedback inputs. Especially for an ebike, I would further expect variable charge rates, so that users who know that their charger isn’t high power – or if they’re concerned with the slightly elevated risk of battery fires at higher charge currents – can choose to use a lower level, or to prolong battery life.

But I’m not an electrical engineer; I just watch in awe the things they produce.

If you were already contributing to your 401k and into specific funds, a market upset shouldn’t change much, except that your contribution buys more shares now, due to the share prices falling. I wrote this comment earlier, for a similar question in a different community.

That said, this assumes your 401k was already set up to: 1) match your risk tolerance, and 2) aligns to your investment objectives and timelines. My investment philosophy draws heavily from the Boglehead school of thought; see inline links.

Market timing – such as waiting to “buy the dip” – rarely turn out to be great moves, since no one can predict the future, and so no one knows where the bottom is. A dip could follow another dip, or a sudden recovery means you’ve lost out on gains. That’s from a financial perspective, and certainly there will be other considerations such as whether the country will still be stable or socially habitable. But from a personal finance perspective, we must make choices in the here-and-now, not from speculation.

To that end, if your 401k asset allocation doesn’t let you sleep well at night, then it’s worth changing it up. But don’t turn too many knobs at once, and carefully consider the long-term picture when doing so. Many a “black swan” event will occur between now and when you draw upon your 401k, so even short-term events can be weathered out.

As for the near term then, what should you do? Aim to be financially resilient: this doesn’t mean you need to start eating ramen every day, but rather, make a plan for what would happen if any of these things happened: the car is totaled, the credit card debt gets called, a job loss, a family member is injured, an HOA assessment to fix the common roof, or the refrigerator or HVAC system breaks down.

To repeat, this does not mean going full-on off-grid prepper mode. But making a plan goes a long way. And if you’re doing this, I’d suggest also making an emergency plan, kinda like an earthquake plan: where would you go if the house is gone, how would you communicate, and what resources can you depend on. Include friends, family, and allies in your planning, and exclude dependencies on any levels of government that may be unreliable.

USB-C is kind of a mess in terms of having a unified or at least clear standard. Inb4 people unknowingly damage their bike battery by using the wrong cable.

USB in general is a mess, but it’s the best mess we’ve got lol. That said, when I briefly perused the spec a while back, I understood that 100+ W operation requires active validation of the attached cables, to make sure they’re built to a higher standard.

I’m hoping – ignoring the issue of shoddy or counterfeit cables, which isn’t a technical issue per se – that this should be enough to prevent damage to end-devices. The newest USB PD spec simply hasn’t been as widely deployed as earlier specs that were more than enough to charge a phone.

It will, however, be awesome when one day, an ebike can quickly top-up a friend’s phone in the field. But I’m getting ahead of myself, dreaming of an all USB C world.

300 kph is 186 mph, which is well beyond the posted speed limit of any jurisdiction I can think of. For reference, here in California, a conviction for driving over 160 kph (100 mph) is punishable as a felony, meaning at least one year in state prison. The highest speed limit in California is 113 kph (70 mph).

In metric units, a triple digit speed (eg 100 kph) is the domain of motorways (aka freeways or expressways). And even arrow-straight motorways have a maximum posted speed limit of some 140 kph. In Germany, the motorway can sometimes have no limit, but the recommended speed – equivalent to the yellow speed signs in the USA – for German autobahns is 130 kph, with some speedy cars occasionally doing 200 kph, I’ve heard.

For further reference, the fastest speed achieved during an F1 motor race is 372 kph. Also, Japanese bullet trains heading west from Tokyo on the Tokaido Shinkansen route run at 285 kph.

300 kph on a public road is grossly irresponsible, since even with no one around, the road is not designed for that speed. Compare race tracks with freeways, and it becomes clear that surface quality, drainage, sight lines, clear space, and other requirements for 200+ kph just aren’t present on public roads, with the notable exception of very special public roads like the Nürburgring.

I’m not sure what this critique is. Is a 1 year warranty on defects not sufficient for an ebike? This isn’t an automobile with thousands of moving parts, and that’s a good thing. If more warranty is desired, aftermarket warranties are an option for purchase.

Be advised that credit card extended warranties often broadly exclude any motorized transport, intended to exclude motor vehicles but that language typically also excludes ebikes.

For timekeeping, you’re correct that timezones shouldn’t affect anything. But in some parts of law, the local time of a particular place (eg state capital, naval observatory, etc…) is what might control when a deadline has passed or not.

If we then have to reconcile that with high speed space travel, then there’s a possibility of ending up in a legal pickle even when the timekeeping aspect might be simple. But now we’re well into legal fanfiction, which is my favorite sort but we don’t have any guardrails ground rules to follow.

To make a bike highway proposal more palatable in all corners of the state, Liias and the Senate transportation budget writers included a 10% tax on new electric bike sales, which was stiffly opposed by bicycle advocacy groups.

Though Liias relented some and narrowed the tax to apply to only the fastest, least regulated ebikes, he said he was “comfortable” with the tax overall.

“It’s a fair arrangement. You chip in and you get a system you can use,” Liias said. “It’s not that we’re taxing ebikes and investing it in something else.”

There’s so much to unpack here. What “corners” of the state were so anti-cycling yet pro-tax that they were persuaded into agreement by a 10% flat tax on ebikes specifically? And while I get that ebike sales are making up a larger part of overall bike sales, what does this mean for acoustic bikes? And what should happen to tax revenues if the cost of ebikes plummets due to, say, very welcome competition in the entry-level space?

Second, this is a state senator speaking about how the “least regulated” ebikes would be taxed. Uh, you’re in the legislature. If such ebikes aren’t being sufficiently regulated, that’s a job for the legislature to fix. It is a tacit admission that they’re not looking at the whole picture, either to write and enforce clear laws on what ebikes are or aren’t allowed, or to bring those ebikes into the scope of the laws, and put them on equal footing from the law’s perspective. Don’t do halfway measures.

Finally, why would only ebikes pay to use a network which ostensibly serves all micro mobility users, electric or otherwise? It would be bizarre for an ebike to pay in but not an EUC, an acoustic bike, or even a Lime scooter.

As the article says, many states do have a state bike system. Here in California, we have ours numbered in the same scheme as US Highways, but they’re almost always just paint on the ground or numbers on a map. If Washington can realize a system of connected, non-road adjacent paths for cyclist to use to get to existing trails and nature destination, that would substantially move the needle.

I would however warn against leaning too heavy in terms like “bike superhighway” or “bike freeway”, which London UK did early on, before they standardized on “cycleway”. After all, most people wouldn’t find bicycling on a freeway to be very comforting, but the idea of a dedicated path to build connectivity – rather than just another recreational path – is a sound idea.

Up until the astronaut part, I was fully convinced that this is a law school theoretical question for an inheritance class, because that’s exactly where the vagaries of “is she my sister?” would also arise.

Then again, if we include time dilation due to near-lightspeed travel, we then have to deal with oddball inheritance cases like if your sister dies mid-travel but then you also die. The Uniform Simultaneous Death Act adopted by several US States would only apply if the difference in time-of-death is within 120 hours, but the Act is silent as to which reference plane will be used, especially if your sister is considered to be traveling “internationally” due to being in space, thus not being in the same US state or time zone as you might be in.

So maybe the entire question is a valid inheritance case study after all.

FYI, some domains can genuinely be acquired for an indefinite period, as the delegation has no expiration period. So long as the domain is kept in good standing (eg two working authoritative nameservers) and doesn’t violate the parent domains’ policies, it will persist. Granted, few people go through this rather-old process to get such domains but they do exist. See my earlier comment.

I mean, this guide would be applicable for non-electric bikes as well. Although I would argue that the electric air pump is superfluous, insofar that (e)bike tires should not be going flat on a daily basis. That said, topping up the air is well-advised on a weekly or monthly schedule, depending on how often it’s ridden. And with that sort of frequency, using a manual air pump to add 0.3 bar (~5 PSI) is hardly a strenuous task.

For in-the-field repairs, a compact manual pump is lighter, or even a CO2 cartridge inflator. But ahead of even those, many flats can be avoided through tire liners, which can deflect common perils like small nails. For an acoustic road bike, the rotating weight penalty can be substantial, but on an ebike, I think it’s a great benefit overall.

PS: Reddit doesn’t allow edit post titles, needed to repost

But this is Lemmy.

I think we had this question a while ago: https://programming.dev/post/26356684

I’m also old, but I understand people do watch portrait videos. Sometimes a lot of them, in a single sitting. There’s a popular social media app which exclusively has short-form portrait videos.